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Over the past year, News.me has been incubated within bitly. Today, we’re pleased to announce that News.me has officially spun out of bitly into an independent company under betaworks. As I wrote earlier this year, with News.me we are seeking to rethink and reinvent the way that people discover news; I’m very excited that News.me is now set up and running as a standalone company with the resources it needs to fully pursue that vision.

Michael Young, who has been with News.me since its inception at the New York Times R&D lab, will continue to lead the development efforts as Chief Technology Officer. He’ll be joined by Rob Haining (of Epicurious, GQ, and Idea Flight app fame) who is leading iOS development, and Justin Van Slembrouck (from Adobe, where he designed the Times Reader application) overseeing User Experience and Design. Jake Levine, formerly Entrepreneur in Residence at betaworks, is joining News.me as General Manager. We’re looking for a few more developers to round out the team, so if you’re passionate about news and the social web and are eager to explore the boundaries of emergent devices, drop us a line.

Finally, in anticipation of a series of releases over the next few months, we’re excited to share that the News.me iPad app is now free. You can read more about this change, along with our plans for the next generation of the product, over at the News.me blog.